Like this:

I felt sad and a little subdued whilst making today’s cards. Two of my friends have recently lost someone very close to them.

I wanted to let them know how very sorry I was to hear their sad news, and for them to know I was thinking about them.

I turned to a beautiful new stamp set from Stampin’ Up that will be available during August 2012 only.

Called a reason to smile, it is a two-step stamp set, so the line flower stamp comes with a complementary image to add colour with. But this time I chose instead to do some water colouring with my aqua painter.

I stamped the flower twice in black stazon ink onto water colour paper, using my stamp-a-majig to line up and stamped the sentiment from the hopeful thoughts set. To colour the flowers, I put a little ink into the lid of my elegant eggplant ink pad by squeezing it whilst shut – this transfers ink from the pad to the lid – and then used my aqua painter.

I added a few lines of dry embossing using the simply scored scoreboard.

I also stamped and coloured a matching flower on a small piece of very vanilla cardstock and adhered it to the inside.

*

For the next card, I stamped onto a piece of very vanilla cardstock and again used the aqua brush to colour, taking care not to soak the cardstock too much.

Finally, I coloured a length of whisper white taffeta ribbon using my aqua brush and elegant eggplant ink, dipping the ribbon into the watery ink on the lid of the ink pad until I was happy with the depth of colour. The ribbon then co-ordinated beautifullly with the cards. Once the ribbon was dry, I tied it into teeny tiny bows and adhered to the cards with mini glue dots.*

And why a reason to smile? … because they are fortunate to have known and loved two wonderful ladies…